Hi there, everybody.

All right, good morning, everyone.

Uh welcome to City Hall here in the city of Hollywood.

Today is Wednesday, February 18th, 2026, a little after 9 a.m.

We're here at uh the commission uh meeting room to uh have a workshop, of course, regarding the utility system improvements and the septic to sewer conversion pursuits of the city.

Uh I'd like to now invite the uh city manager for some opening remarks, and then I know he'll of course introduce our director of utilities, Vin Morello.

George.

Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Commissioners, and to uh to all the members of the public and and staff.

Um as you indicated, uh, we're here for a workshop today, and I appreciate you um invoking the title that we've we've indicated here, utility system improvements as well as the septic to sewer conversion program.

You might remember we had a uh in the recent past uh a rather detailed and lengthy workshop on this topic, and we said because of the uh the complexity of the issue that we would need a second workshop, and quite frankly, I believe after today we will likely need a third workshop on this issue.

And so it's important to remember that this is a workshop um and so that it does not require any formal decisions today, but to the extent that we can make some progress in focusing on the issue, building some consensus and direction, and getting to some decision points that will allow us to start um this um this adventure uh that we call septic to sewer um is very important because literally um this issue has been around for decades in the city of Hollywood, and that's no exaggeration.

And it truly is one of the most important and impactful issues uh facing the city of Hollywood, because when you've got forty-four percent of your um households and properties that remain on septic to sewer in an urbanized area, that is it's not typical.

And it also is is impactful in terms of what it allows to be done with some of those properties in terms of economic development and redevelopment and potential.

Um, the other issue is is time.

And as time goes on, the reality will be that septic tanks someday will not be issuing um new permits to be allowed anymore.

The day will come when septic tanks will no longer uh be happening.

Everybody thinks that that is not possible because it's been there always, but it's it's simply true that there was a day when um ocean outfall was the only consideration for the disposal of treated effluent, wastewater effluent, and deep well injection was was not even a consideration.

Now we're a hundred and eighty degrees from there.

So it's amazing how the landscape can change uh especially with time and with environmental regulation.

So someday that decision will come down.

And the sooner we get started, even if it's on a very gradual slow path to the point where we're not vulnerable to that, the better we will all be, and the easier the time and the money factor will be.

We recognize and we'll go into some detail today that the money factor is significant.

How do you pay for it?

And we've have some options and how we do that, how we cover it, how we spread it over time so it's manageable and affordable because we're not we're not um you know, being insensitive to that issue.

We realize the impacts there.

Um but it is a very uh significant uh decision and it goes beyond personal issues and environmental issues and la as we mentioned some of the other economic development issues.

So um we we ask your indulgence today.

The presentation is rather detailed and has some length to it.

We'll move through it as quickly as we can.

If we can get through the initial presentation without questions, if that's possible to hold those after the first bubble.

And then we have scheduled it for three hours, so there will be plenty of time for questions and discussion.

And after that, we'll go from there and we'll do everything we can to make this the beginning of how we start the resolution on this issue so that time works for us and we don't let it work against us.

So with that, I'll ask uh Ben Morello, our director of public utilities to start.

Thank you, City Manager.

Vin Morello, Director of Utilities.

I have with me here today uh the team of uh Phyllis Shaw, our deputy uh direct deputy director of finance, Cassandra Meyer is our operations director, along with our consultants Azen and Sawyer, Stantec, the rate consultant, and our Cadis, the water master plan consultant.

Today we're going to cover uh in this sort of general uh these general topics.

The objective is to reach a consensus in these five areas so that we can bring resolutions back to the Commission for adoption uh in a fairly short order.

The first is a consensus to adopt the water and the wastewater master plans.

That's pretty straightforward that allows us to uh apply for grants and loans, uh allows us to do facility projects without uh applying for detailed facility uh plan modifications.

The second is a consensus uh for the five-year CIP and the core infrastructure.

Um there's really no options here, the for various reasons, regulatory and uh and compliance reasons.

We need to act on these uh this core infrastructure improvement uh in the next five years.

And then on top of that is a consensus to adopt the septic to sewer program, and that's more related to the timing, the phasing of the projects, which uh sewage basins would go first, uh, how that's integrated with the stormwater master plan.

The fourth is uh is the biggest topic.

It's the rate structure, um, just a discussion of how to pay for it and what's the appropriate uh course of action for the city.

And then uh lastly, a general discussion on the application of the SOAR ordinance that we have in place, which is for those septic customers that have now had SOAR made available to them.

How can we compel them to uh hook up in a collaborative way and not a uh not a uh way, a punishing way.

There's three essential pillars to projects or programs, which are groups of projects, and they are uh timing, funding, and expertise.

And I'll cover the expertise first.

Uh with our firms, Hazen and Sawyer, Arcada, Stantec, every consultant really that's contributed to this report.

They have uh decades and decades of experience, very deep benches of diverse technical talent, and they've prepared master plans in very detailed fashion and done appropriate and objective risk analysis on the timing of those.

Uh Phyllis Shaw is uh deputy director of finance.

She has decades of experience in utility finance operations and uh brings a wealth of knowledge to the utility.

And Cassandra Myers, uh, she has decades of experience in operations and compliance with utilities and brings uh depth of knowledge as well.

My background starting in Boston was on the Boston Harbor Project.

It was a $4 billion project to clean up Boston Harbor and that situation there was that uh the utility was centuries old.

They had commingled stormwater and wastewater infrastructure so that when there was heavy rains, the soils would back up and raw sewage would pump into the Charles River, the Mystic River, the Neponset River.

And then if when it did reach the treatment plant, the treatment plant uh they the state had opted out of the Clean Water Act funding available at the time.

So the treatment plant was never upgraded, and it dumped raw sewage into Boston Harbor.